Stolen heritage

Crime, conflict, archaeological excavations and natural depredations have for millennia taken an increasing toll of the globe’s cultural heritage. During July alone there was a series of high-profile thefts in Austria, Italy and Spain.

Last week security cameras filmed two men snatching in broad daylight a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds. The necklace was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt, who wore it at the 1939 wedding of her daughter Fawzia to Iran’s then crown prince, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He later became shah and was deposed in 1979. The necklace was sold by Sotheby’s in New York in 2015 for $4.3m.

In Spain, thieves raided the Treasure of Villena, Bronze Age gold artefacts described as one of Europe’s most important prehistoric finds. Four of the most important works by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina. Italian police declared they had recovered three paintings by French masters Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse stolen this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma.

The European police agency Europol reported that robberies at European museums have been growing increasingly violent, with thieves armed with guns, attacking staff and using sledgehammers, and explosives to access and strip chosen exhibits.

The picture is not totally negative. The Italian art squad returned 27 archaeological artefacts to Mexico which had been illegally imported to Italy and sold to or held by private persons who could not prove provenance or produce legal ownership documents. Among the artefacts were ancient terracotta and clay figurines, head sculptures, and fossils.

The legal and lucrative antiquities market is dominated by auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and Bonhams which sell to collectors, dealers, museums and institutions often become involved in disputes over stolen and illegally exported antiquities due to unproven or dubious provenance. The young United States – which celebrates its 250th birthday this year – is the chief customer, market and trading hub for legally and illegally exported cultural heritage from the entire world. There is high US domestic demand among private collectors, galleries, and public institutions while criminal networks exploit this market to launder money acquired illegally, evade taxes, and finance transnational organised crime or conflict, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Tomb robbing is said to be the second oldest profession. As soon as man attained a certain degree of civilisation, he began to rob the gods, goods, and graves of others as well as sack the cities, towns and villages of rivals. Greeks robbed Egyptian tombs, Romans dug up the cemeteries of the Greeks and the Etruscans, and the invading barbarians pillaged the graves of the Byzantines. Disused temples and public buildings were dismantled and their stones were reused. The glowing white limestone that originally clad the pyramids at Giza was shaken by earthquakes and used over centuries for mosques, fortifications, and palaces in Cairo.

For the despoilers of civilisations, the last half of the 20th century was notably fruitful in stolen Palestine, divided Cyprus, war-ravaged Cambodia, conflict-stricken Lebanon, dismembered Yugoslavia, unsettled Eastern Europe, and devastated Iraq. Eminent archaeologists and historians warned former US President George W. Bush to provide protection for the Iraq National Museum of Antiquities, the world’s fifth most important repository of antiquities from ancient through medieval eras. A map of more than 4,000 archaeological sites was provided. US troops parked their tanks on the delicate site of ancient Babylon, famous for its hanging gardens. No protection was provided for the Iraq Museum. Looting began after Baghdad fell while a US tank was parked nearby. Provincial museums were pillaged. Before the war there had been little pillage in Iraq as the country’s President Saddam Hussein, who valued his country’s long history, provided protection for the most valuable sites and cracked down on looters.

Iraq continues to be plagued with minor illegal excavations, but large-scale plundering has decreased while smuggling of small artefacts, rare coins, and manuscripts continues and they are sold on the black market or through social media. Iraq’s security and intelligence agencies arrest smugglers and stage raids to seize secreted artefacts.

The black market in stolen cultural artefacts is a major global criminal enterprise embracing looted antiquities, stolen gold, and rare art which smuggles through covert networks similar to those trafficking in people, drugs, arms, counterfeit goods, and wildlife. According to INTERPOL and the FBI Art Crime Team, the global black market for stolen art and antiquities generates an estimated $5 billion to $8 billion annually.

The UNESCO Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects displays missing artefacts and identifies where they come from to display the cultural deprivation caused by trafficking while the INTERPOL Stolen Works of Art Database provides information on police records on nearly 57,000 looted and stolen items to assist officers who are investigating illegal sales.

Photo: X